This course enables students to gain an understanding of theoretical frameworks that contribute to generating and shaping knowledge and understanding and the identity of the Visual Arts and Design in contemporary education. The course draws its significance from the Literature Review for the National Review of Visual Education in Visual Arts, Craft, Design and Visual Communication (Brown, 2006). It reviews the ongoing importance of the subjective, structural, cultural and postmodern frames, introduced in the NSW Visual Arts syllabuses in the 1990s, and extends on those frames by reflecting developments since then in philosophy, psychology and technology. The course also introduces new theoretical frameworks to visual arts education that have endured and re-emerge after contact with changing cultures, fashions and technologies. Consistent with the Literature Review, the course demonstrates how each of these theoretical frameworks exert an influence on how we understand and explain art; impact on teaching styles; apply to students in different ages/stages of schooling; and reflect and advance approaches to educational policy. It offers students opportunities to apply their understandings to their students’ reasoning abilities and is committed to ensuring the need for teachers of the visual arts who can inform their students in the teaching of cognitively differentiated coursework rather than merely nurturing them.